India needs to intervene on the gully erosion of 77 districts (70 per cent of which is in eastern and southern India) to meet the United Nations agenda of land degradation by 2030, according to a 2025 scientific report published in Nature.
Land is being degraded across the world. As per the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), around 20 to 40 per cent of the total area of the world is affected by land degradation. This will affect almost half of the population connected to crop lands, drylands, wetlands, forest and grasslands.
‘Land degradation’ is defined by the UNCCD as the “reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of lands in arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid areas” and more recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, another body of UN dealing with climate change defines the land degradation, as the “trend in land condition expressed as long-term reduction or loss of at least one of the following: biological productivity”.
“Gully erosion is a serious obstacle in India’s land degradation neutrality mission,” as per the authors of the 2025 report. It is a major reason of global land degradation. In India, gully erosion encompasses three distinct geomorphic features — gully systems, badlands and denuded hill slopes.
Prolonged gully erosions produce deeply dissected landscapes known as ‘badlands’, said the authors. The report added that Indian badlands affect agricultural productivity, water stress and droughts, causing the total migration from a village. The authors observed that this is the reason why the idea has been to map Indian badlands. But the current work is on the mapping of gully systems, as these have a much more far-reaching effect on land degradation.
While western India is home to badlands, eastern India houses more of gully features. “Our overall aim is to create the first detailed spatial inventory of gully erosion in India through an unprecedented mapping of the location, extents and management conditions of gully erosion features using very high-resolution (≤1 m) satellite imagery. We subsequently use this data to evaluate the current status of gully management and estimate the total gullied land area across the two highest sub-national administrative levels, i.e., states and districts. Using our results, we identify the provinces that are in need of rehabilitative intervention to tackle gully erosion and finally make a case for relevant policy (re)formulation to appropriately manage the gully erosion problem in India in the context of the national land degradation neutrality (LDN) drive,” the study noted.
Anindya Majhi, the lead author to the scientific paper, stated: “Contrary to the popular belief that Indian badlands represent the worst-case scenario of gully erosion, we have found that gully erosion in eastern India poses a more serious impediment to land degradation neutrality in India than the badlands of central and western India. However, considering that imprudent badlands reclamation practices have often had several detrimental environmental, ecological and socioeconomic fallouts, appropriate badland rehabilitation is also necessary in regions where they are predominant.”
The report added that it is very challenging to reverse the land degradation caused by gully erosion. The authors identified 77 high and very high management priority districts related to gully erosion.
The maximum gully erosion, as per the report, occurs in the states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The article confirmed that, “The spatial dissonance of the gully erosion hazard in India is best underlined by the fact that Jharkhand in eastern India is the only state that requires the maximum priority on gully management going forward.”
The authors stated that India needs a land management policy which clearly distinguishes badlands and gullies and their impacts on society and environment.
The article clearly indicates rates of gully erosion will increase in the coming years due to an increase in rainfall intensity induced by climate change effects.
The report’s authors strongly feel that the spatial inventory and district level gully erosion maps produced by them will be useful in the management of the gullied lands.